My Thoughts About One of My Favorite Places--Northeastern Indiana's Amish Country

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Shipshewana Walldogs, Part Two: The Pumpkin Vine Railroad

Second in my series on the murals done by the Shipshewana Walldogs last summer is this mural, found on the back side of the D’Vine Gallery shop on
Depot Street. (Drive into the parking
lot and look around back.) It depicts
the LS&MS Railway (Lake Shore & Michigan Southern) train line known as
the “Pumpkin Vine Railroad” because of its twists and turns.

The line was built before the town; in fact, the railroad
was the reason for the town. After the
tracks were laid in 1888 for a railroad running east and north from Goshen to
Middlebury, then onwards through northeast Indiana into Sturgis and finally Findley,
Michigan, the town of Shipshewana—as it later came to be known—soon sprung
up. Traffic on the Pumpkin Vine was
brisk; in the first month (November 1888), over 1,900 passengers were
transported. The depot in Shipshewana
still stands, known today as the Gallarina Arts shop on Depot Street.

The LS&MS operated the Pumpkin Vine Railroad from Goshen,
Indiana through Shipshewana to Findley, Michigan until 1914, when it was merged
with about five other railroads into the New York Central Railroad
Company. By 1928, the train no longer
carried mail, and by 1931 it didn’t carry passengers—but business was brisk enough
to justify its continued operation. Not
so by 1960, when the portion of the line from Shipshewana north to Sturgis,
Michigan was abandoned. By 1975 or so,
the entire Pumpkin Vine line ceased operations due to low profits and
deteriorating facilities.

But this wasn’t the end.
There were still two more chapters to be added to the Pumpkin Vine story.

In July 1980, the Lakeshore Historical Railroad Foundation
started to offer rail excursions from Middlebury to Shipshewana on Sundays. The restored steam engine pulled five Rock
Island commuter cars along the seven miles between the towns. I wish I could have ridden that train! Sadly, profits were low, and the excursions were
discontinued in November of that year, and the tracks were removed and sold for
scrap in 1982.

But that’s not the end of the story. An organization called "Friends of the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail" purchased the abandoned railroad corridor in 1993. Years later, after much legal wrangling and
persuasion of local farmers and other landowners, plans came together for a “rails
to trails” type bike trail along the old railroad route. Ownership of the property was transferred to
local park departments for trail construction and management.

Today, the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail stretches sixteen miles
from Goshen northeast through Middlebury to Shipshewana, almost entirely “off
road.” The Shipshewana-to-Middlebury
portion was completed in 2012, and it is a delight. Now bikers and walkers, both Amish and “English,”
have a safe and scenic way to travel the seven miles between Shipshewana and
Middlebury. My husband and I have spent
many happy hours on the trail, which is especially beautiful in the fall.

I wrote more about the trail in this blog post. A printable brochure about the trail can be found here.

Note: I am indebted
to the Friends of the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail website (www.pumpkinvine.org) for much of the information
used in this post.